I really like that Vrakthris was saying exactly what I was saying the problem with their responses were: when there were counter-points presented, they would spit out a copy-paste response that just was the same thing.
Meanwhile, if people want a legitimate point against anonymous posting… Here are a few. It probably won’t be discussed because they refuse to acknowledge the problem with their ideas, but here they are.
The Online Disinhibition Effect: Any claims that anonymity makes people nicer is rebutted by studies, the benefits is that being anonymous may make one more free to share or say things they would not normally say, however, we are already anonymous here in that we are free to say what we wish and be open with what we think or feel without the threat of it affecting us beyond our own fake reputations on these forums. That disinhibition effect, however, also makes people meaner as we are less empathetic towards blank screens and with no possible repercussions for what we say, trolling happens.
We already have partial-anonymity that keeps our personal lives and information from the real world separate from what occurs here so we are at no threat of losing our jobs or livelihoods or anything else of the sort unless what it is posted is so vile that it would require being reported to law enforcement (thankfully I have not seen anything of the sort on these forums) so for the most part, we are already anonymous for the purpose of having privacy on the forums.
Attaching at least a character name to a message, it allows one to build a reputation of being a credible or non-credible source of information. In the world of information, anything anyone ever says is only as believable as the source and that is true universally. You’d want the views of a raider on things about raiding, and the views of a PvPer on things about PvP, just like how you’d want to get the weather report from a weather channel (or the app that gets its info from the weather channel) and not from just a guy on the street. When you remove any form of credibility, you end up with effectively Youtube comment sections where sorting the relevant answers from the fake ones becomes more or less impossible.
Reasonable accountability. Plato, a Greek Philosopher, even touched on the concept of how people act when they have no fear of consequence. Even back before internet trolling wasn’t even a concept, the concept of anonymity (or invisibility in the example of the Ring of Gyges) was measured in that morality comes from full-disclosure and that if we did not have accountability for our actions, we would all act unjustly.
Psychological research also supports that claim from a philosopher from Ancient Greece that anonymity increases unethical behavior, from cases on cyber bullying and road rage to even lawsuits in which anonymous posters had gone so far out of line that those posters had to have that anonymity stripped away as they had legislation filed against them because, believe it or not, every state in the US has laws in regards to harassment, stalking, and bullying which include electronic communication.
We are anonymous on the forums. We have our privacy protected and we’re safe to say what we wish and there’s zero reason to be more private, as we are at the point where we have enough privacy where we can be more open with what we say to express our opinions but going further into the anonymous pit will only start bringing out more of the negative aspects of online anonymity.
Asking for full-anonymity is asking for that ring of invisibility to be free from consequence and anyone who has been on the internet for more than 24 hours in their life would know, an anonymous person with a keyboard has the capacity to become a monster.
There are already enough methods to prevent people from messaging you, to prevent them from knowing what aspects of the game you engage in, to prevent them from knowing your alts or your guild or even if you have played the game at all, yet at the same time, who needs to hide such information? The less anyone knows, the less anyone is to care and if the OP’s idea was taken seriously then we’d end up with just a lot of threads just like this one, no discussion, no real substance, just a lot bad takes being flung at a wall while the rest of the forum-goers just watch the trainwreck.
In summary?
If someone harasses you, report them. If you don’t want to talk to anyone in an online game? Don’t say anything. If you want to make a suggestion? Convince them. This suggestion, however, hasn’t had a single redeeming quality yet, we already are anonymously posting with an fake name, asking to remove the fake name is just inviting more problems.